DEBKAfile - Israeli leaflets call on South Lebanese Wednesday night, July 19, to evacuate territory south of Litani River

DEBKAfile - We start where the media stop

Israeli leaflets call on South Lebanese Wednesday night, July 19, to evacuate territory south of Litani River

July 20, 2006, 12:33 PM (GMT+02:00)

This dramatic call will affect some 300,000 inhabitants, some of whom have already headed north in response to previous Israeli calls to withdraw from harm’s way in Hizballah-controlled regions.

It is not clear how this mass migration can be effected when many of the roads and bridges were bombed out by Israeli jets.

Wednesday, July 19, when the Lebanon war entered its second week, plunged Israel in combat on four warfronts.

Hizballah rockets hit the Israeli town of Nazareth and killed two brothers aged 3 and 7, Rabiya and Mahmoud Taluzi, as they played outside their home. Twenty- seven people were injured.

Central Israel became one large gridlock for five hours as security forces staged a manhunt for a Palestinian suicide bomber from the West Bank heading for a crowd center. He was caught in Hod Hasharon.

Two Israeli special forces soldiers were killed in South Lebanon, the first to fall in a major ground battle with Hizballah. Nine were injured. At three points, Rosh Hanikra, Avivim and Metula, Hizballah forces went on the offensive and breached the border - only to be thrown back by Israeli ground and air units in heavy exchanges of fire which raged into the night.

Hizballah hurled at Israel the largest number of rockets in the eight-day conflict, an estimated 200. They wrought heavy damage to homes and instilled shock, terror and the first signs of deprivation in more than a million Israeli civilians caged in shelters in the northern Israeli towns of Haifa, Nahariya, Acre, Carmiel, Safed, KIryat Shemona, the small communities and farms of Upper Galilee, Lower Galilee and the Hula Valley.

In Gaza, Israeli raider forces clashed with armed members of the Palestinian Hamas. In the West Bank town of Nablus, another Israeli counter-terror unit held the government center to siege to round up dozens of wanted Palestinian terrorists. Ten Palestinian gunmen were killed in the two engagements.